This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.

Cardiovascular risk factors prevalent among pediatric liver transplant patients

PHILADELPHIA — Metabolic syndrome and other cardiac disorders were prevalent among a population of pediatric liver transplant recipients, according to data presented at the ACG Annual Scientific Meeting. 

“The pediatric liver transplant population is an evolving population,” Shankar Baskar, MD, Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Ohio, told Healio.com/Hepatology. “We have really good survival data on them and 85% of them survive through the first 5 years. This population will go into adulthood and as we already know, the adult population, especially with liver transplant, have a lot of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality.”  

Shankar Baskar

Data from 58 pediatric patients who underwent liver transplantation before 18 years of age (mean age of transplant, 6.3±6.1 years) and survived more than 5 years post-transplantation were evaluated by Baskar and colleagues to determine any prevalence of metabolic syndrome and cardiac disorders.

Twenty-four patients were classified as overweight or obese and 9 patients had metabolic syndrome (17%). Echocardiography data was available for 23 of the patients; 10 had left ventricular hypertrophy and three patients showed signs of pulmonary hypertension.

An association between steroid intake and metabolic syndrome was evident among the patients (P<.05), as well as hepato-pulmonary syndrome, cirrhotic cardiomyopathy and other cardiac disorders.

During long-term follow-up, metabolic syndrome and its components were found to be prevalent among patients after pediatric liver transplantation, according to the abstract.

“I think studying this young population as they get into adulthood is very important because we will have this group of patients who will be transitioning to the adult population and we won’t know what to look out for in them,” Baskar told Healio.com/Hepatology. “Doing studies like these tells us that their liver transplant might be functioning well, but they have other problems especially with metabolic syndrome, hypertension, and obesity. I think these need to be addressed in very early stages to give them a prolonged lifetime survival.” – by Melinda Stevens

For more information:

Baskar S. Abstract P1182. Presented at: Annual ACG Scientific Meeting, Oct. 17-22, 2014; Philadelphia, PA.

Disclosure: Relevant financial disclosures were not provided by the researchers.